This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > December
December 2008
Georgia should’ve been better than Capital One Bowl - but wasn’t
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Orlando — Mark Richt stood in a hotel a block from Sea World and told the fib coaches always tell. “Very happy to be here,” he said, and we all know that isn’t true.
Georgia should have been too good for the Capital One Bowl. Even with its schedule and its injuries, this should have been a BCS team at worst. Yet here the Bulldogs are, about to play in a second-tier bowl that seems both an afterthought and an abject mismatch.
A Detroit writer posed the first question at Richt’s media briefing Wednesday: Can Michigan State stay on the field with Georgia? “Come on,” said Richt, bristling. “I don’t think that’s a very good question, quite frankly. And that’s with all due respect to you.”
Then this: “Their record is the same as ours, in-conference and non-conference.”
And there’s the rub. Michigan State received 21 points in the preseason Associated Press poll, which would have placed it 35th if the ratings extended that far. Georgia drew 1,528 points and was ranked No. 1. Indeed, Wednesday’s USA Today contained this damning sentence: “Michigan State’s Big Ten campaign was similar to that of Georgia in the SEC, with no bad losses but not close against the league’s front-runners.”
Michigan State’s preseason aim, coach Mark Dantonio said, “was to get to a New Year’s Day bowl.” Georgia’s goals were beyond, but the Bulldogs never came close to realizing them. They were outscored by 31 points in a half against Alabama and by 28 in a half against Florida and by 26 in a quarter against Georgia Tech. When the going got tough, too often these Dogs cut and ran. They had everything except resolve.
Regarding this bowl, willpower seems the only real consideration. If Georgia wants to play, it will win big. But can a team that began the season ranked No. 1 rouse itself for a bowl known best for being staged near the Happiest Place on Earth? (“The greatest entertainment in the world,” said Richt, speaking of Disney and its ilk.)
“When you don’t reach your goals, it can be tough to motivate,” said Richt, who maintained his team’s practices have been spirited and forceful. “I’ve never seen our guys go in the tank,” he said, presumably forgetting the first half of the Sugar Bowl against West Virginia.
The recent history of this curious bowl is that the SEC entrant arrives disappointed and leaves dejected. The plodding Big Ten has won the past four Capital Ones: Iowa over LSU; Wisconsin over first Auburn and then Arkansas, and Michigan over Florida last season in a game that left the Urban Crier utterly exasperated. Even on Jan. 1, 2004, a Richt-coached team that had won the SEC East wasted a late lead and needed overtime to subdue Purdue here.
“Our theme has been to send these seniors out the way they deserve to go out, and also that this is the beginning of 2009,” Richt said. “I don’t think those ideas conflict.”
They don’t, but they do. Because there’s a strong chance Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno, neither of them seniors, won’t stick around after the Capital One. What tone can be set for next fall if they’re in the NFL?
“We’re excited about this game and excited about the future,” said Richt, perhaps telling the truth this time. And earlier, thinking back to August, he’d broached the topic of what might have been.
“Entering the season with people saying you should be No. 1 makes it more of a topic of national discussion when you’re not,” Richt said. And then this: “I’d a lot more rather be No. 2 than No. 1.”
That’s no longer an issue. His underachieving team is No. 16 — three spots ahead of Michigan State.
Permalink | Comments (146) | Post your comment | Categories: UGA/SEC
Trip to Arizona a blessing for blessed Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flowery Branch — Mike Smith began his postgame walk to the locker room Sunday believing his team would have a week off and then a home playoff game. By the time he reached his destination he’d learned otherwise. And was the Falcons coach disappointed?
“It would have been nice to have a home game with our home-field advantage and the bye week,” Smith said Monday. “That’s definitely an advantage.”
But again we see that some higher power seems to have taken a liking to these bold Birds. Because their reward for finishing second in the NFC South is one of the sweetest consolation prizes in the history of consolation. They get to play Arizona, and here’s what Vegas thinks of the Cardinals: They’re home-field playoff underdogs to the team that only four months ago was the consensus choice as the NFL’s worst.
Sixteen games have taught us these Falcons are much closer to being the league’s best than its worst, and there seems no reason for the happy story to end Saturday in Glendale. Arizona was 6-0 against the NFL’s worst division, 3-7 against real teams. It was 1-4 against playoff qualifiers — the Falcons were 3-2 — and enters the postseason having lost four of six.
If you have to play on an opponent’s field in January, you pray Arizona is the opponent. For all the worry about the Cardinals’ passing — Kurt Warner and three 1,000-yard receivers — they have nothing else. They’ve yielded 101 more points than the Falcons, and Arizona’s running game is the league’s worst. And a team that can’t run is a team that shouldn’t be playing in January.
Smitty being Smitty, he made Arizona sound like the 1966 Packers in his weekly media briefing — “very potent,” he called the Cardinals — but in a private conversation afterward he made it clear that he likes his team’s chances in the month ahead. He was the defensive line coach for the 2000 Baltimore Ravens, a wild-card team that won the Super Bowl, and when a visitor asked if he sees similarities in these Falcons, he said this: “I’m very confident we will execute and go out and play well.”
For someone so cautious, that came close to sounding like Joe Willie Namath the week of Super Bowl III. (OK, maybe not that close.) But Smith has reasons to be cheerful: His team has passed every big test, and it seems as, er, potent as any team in the playoff grid.
The Falcons have been a week-by-week surprise to those of us on the periphery, but not to the men inside the complex at 4400 Falcon Parkway. Indeed, Smith said he learned all he needed to know about his team not in those 11 seconds against Chicago or the overtime against Tampa Bay, but way back in Week 2.
The Falcons trailed the Bucs 17-3 in Tampa. Matt Ryan had thrown two early interceptions and was getting hammered by a defense that lives to hammer young quarterbacks. And then you looked up in the fourth quarter and it was 17-6 and the Falcons had a first-and-goal and Ryan was rattled no more.
“You talk about turning points,” Smith said. “That was a turning point. Our young quarterback completed 8 of 9 passes, and we showed we could handle a surge on the road. The outcome [a 24-9 loss] wasn’t what we wanted, but you felt very proud about what we were able to accomplish.”
The Falcons would win four of their next seven road games, and not since that first half on Sept. 14 have they seemed overwhelmed anywhere. They will not be overwhelmed Saturday in Glendale. They’ve beaten better teams in tougher places.
They’ll beat the Cardinals and move on to the next task.
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Bradley’s Buzz: Right on Ryan, wrong on all else
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Scoreboard gets a new home
The final Bradley’s Buzz of 2008 seems an appropriate place for the Accountability Scoreboard, which annually totals my personal hits and misses. Or, in the case of the year almost complete, my personal hit — note the singular — and misses.
To be frank, I had a lousy prognosticating year. Many of you know this already, but here are the specifics in inglorious detail.
Braves on the road to greatness
That was the headline on a silly little something I wrote on Memorial Day. I predicted the local baseball team would be in first place by the Fourth of July and would win the NL East going away. In a career of spectacular whiffs, I’d rank this among the top three.
As ever, I had my reasons. I’d liked the Braves in the spring, and they’d had held together through a run of early injuries and seemed to be getting healthy. As ever, cold reality intervened. Four significant players — Glavine, Smoltz, Diaz and Kotsay — went on the disabled list within two weeks of the ill-fated column. Was it my fault the infirm Braves blew the ol’ law of averages to smithereens?
Only five days earlier, I’d pronounced the Mets dead, which they weren’t quite yet. The New Yorkers again made a run at the division title, again losing out on the regular season’s final day. So my diagnosis wasn’t exactly wrong — just four months premature.
Georgia en route to a championship
I’ve already done a mea culpa on this topic, but I’m sure Florida fans won’t ever get tired of a rerun of my recap. Here goes:
I picked Georgia to win the BCS title. I did this once in May and twice more — here and again here — in July. I called the Bulldogs the class of the SEC in both September and October.
Truth to tell, I was wrong about nearly everything regarding college football. (Call me the new Beano Cook.) Tech did not go 7-5. Tech did not lose to Georgia. Paul Johnson’s offense did, however, work as predicted.
Tim Tebow did not win another Heisman. Matthew Stafford did not outplay Tebow. Auburn did not win the SEC West. Wake Forest did not win the ACC Atlantic. Texas did not win the Big 12 (though it was still, I contend, the best team in that league). Southern Cal did beat Ohio State but will not play in the BCS title game. Clemson was, as I surmised, wildly overrated. And Virginia Tech did, as I guessed, win the ACC Coastal.
Picking three of the Final Four
Ordinarily I’d be thrilled to have batted .750 in my Final Four Fiasco, but anyone who picked all four No. 1 seeds batted 1.000. One such person lives under this roof. She was 10 at the time. She beat her dumb ol’ dad, who’s five times 10 and then some.
Oh, yeah. I also picked UCLA to win it all. Wrong on that, too.
Underclubbing on the Falcons
What gripes me is that I was really trying to be optimistic. (And believe me, optimism from me requires a concerted effort.) I picked the Falcons to go 5-11. They finished 11-5. How bad is it when you miss the final record by six whole games? So bad that only one thing serves to mitigate my error, and here it is.
Thank goodness for Matty Ice!
I advocated drafting him. When the Falcons did, I applauded their sagacity. When they decided to make him their starter, I endorsed that, too.
And here I’d like to thank Mr. Ryan for saving me from having a worse year than Wall Street. And I’d also like to thank y’all for reading and responding. Even if I’m not much of a seer, I’d like to think this goofy little blog has become a vibrant place for one and all. Even Gator fans.
And one to grow on
It’s an Accountability Scoreboard tradition to end with a final bold forecast. Last year’s involved Georgia and the BCS title, wouldn’t you know, and was utterly incorrect. This year’s involves the Falcons, and here it is:
The final score of the NFC title game: Falcons 21, Giants 20.
Matty, don’t fail me now.
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Falcons in Super Bowl not so farfetched
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For 32 years they were words never spoken as a statement of fact, and even now they’ve been uttered just once. But it’s not inconceivable that we could hear them again come Jan. 18, 2009:
“The Falcons are going to the Super Bowl.”
The announcer who delivered that famous radio call on the afternoon of Jan. 17, 1999, believes the improbable could happen again. “Back then, it seemed so preposterous,” said Jeff Hullinger, then the Falcons’ play-by-play voice and now the morning newscaster on B-98.5 and the afternoon man on WSB. “Now that it’s been done, it doesn’t seem quite so impossible. They’ve shattered the myth.”
That’s true. We can never again say the Falcons can’t reach the Super Bowl because history tells us they advanced to Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami. (So, alas, do the court documents in the Eugene Robinson case.) Super Bowl XLIII will likewise be in Florida — Tampa, to be precise. And that season reached a crest in the Metrodome, conveniently the site of Sunday’s playoff-clinching victory.
“It’s easy to see the parallels,” Hullinger said. “Minneapolis occupies a special place in Falcons lore — there was the NFC championship game [of 1999], and the Michael Vick game [of 2002, when the quarterback ran 46 yards for the winning touchdown in overtime; Hullinger called that game, too]. And now this game. That place holds a watershed status.”
In 1998, a lot of folks didn’t take the Falcons seriously until November. “Not until they won in Foxborough [against New England] and [tight end] O.J. Santiago had that really big game,” Hullinger said. “If anything, people have gotten around to believing in this team a little faster.”
Still, there are varying shades of belief. For three months the 2008 Falcons were viewed as a feel-good story. Now you look on this team, which hasn’t lost consecutive games and hasn’t been beaten by more than 15 points and has held its own in the NFL’s toughest division, and you’re beginning to ask: Well, why not the Birds?
They’ve already beaten Carolina and Minnesota and Tampa Bay. They’d surely have a chance against Arizona, which just lost by 40 points in New England. And there’s no reason to think that toppling the NFC’s No. 1 seed would be any more difficult than it was to upend the 15-1 Vikings 10 years ago.
Said Hullinger: “Don’t you think they’re capable of beating the Giants?”
Well, yes. A team as sound as the Falcons — possessed of a strong running game and a heady quarterback and a defense that keeps making big plays — would have a shot against anybody anywhere. And, owing to Carolina’s loss in the Meadowlands on Sunday night, it’s possible the Falcons will finish as division champs, which would buy them the No. 2 seed. Which is what they were in 1998.
As Jessie Tuggle, an integral part of the Super Bowl run, said last week: “When you get in the playoffs, anything can happen. Why couldn’t this team do it?”
Four months ago these Falcons were 150-1 to win the Super Bowl, the longest shot on the board. They’re now listed at 16-1. The wind is at their backs. Not only are they winning, but a slew of other contenders are losing.
Once we’d have laughed ourselves silly at the thought of hearing those eight words — “The Falcons are going to the Super Bowl!” — anytime soon, but there should be no laughter today. It could happen. It really could.
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Bradley’s Buzz: All hail the men of Smitty!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A great story and a pretty fair coach
Who saw this coming? Nobody. That’s why the Falcons’ rise to the playoffs is, as Don Banks of SI.com proclaims, “simply astounding.” And that’s why, according to Pat Yasinskas of ESPN.com, Mike Smith is the NFL’s coach of the year.
And here, from Sporting News Today, is a word you don’t often see applied to the Falcons — dynasty. Clifton Brown — or at least Clifton Brown’s headline writer — invokes it. (Many thanks to Baracked The Vote! for the tip.)
Also on SI.com, former colleague Steve Aschburner provides five things that were learned from Sunday’s game. Four of them have to do with the Vikings — Steve lives in the Twin Cities, you should know — but Lesson No. 2 involves a “feel-good story,” and that one has nothing to do with the Vikes.
I’ve hesitated to link to anything Bill Simmons writes for ESPN.com because I don’t much like sports writing weighed down by a ton of pop-culture references. But I offer this Simmons-ism because he ranks the Falcons the NFL’s sixth-best team, and he did this even before they’d won in Minnesota. So read the paragraph that concerns the Birds and skip the next eight paragraphs, which are devoted to Christmas gifts for guys.
And here, from Corey Dade of the Wall Street Journal, is a Q & A with Arthur M. Blank. You’ll be shocked to learn that AMB much prefers this season to last.
Breaking down the Hawks
Here’s a instructive take from Charley Rosen of Foxsports.com. Rosen, who used to coach basketball and has long been one of the keenest analysts around, breaks down the Hawks’ narrow loss to the Celtics and has loads of insights on the local club. To wit: Josh Smith always backpedals on defense because he’s looking to block a shot, and Mike Bibby almost never goes to the basket.
Rosen pays compliments, too. (Lots of them, actually.) And his final assessment is that the Hawks are a dangerous team but probably are two years from being a bona fide title contender. Which sounds about right.
The one observation that doesn’t ring true is Rosen’s assessment of Marvin Williams being by far the most athletic Hawk. Do you think maybe he meant Josh Smith?
Who wants to mess with Tex?
As Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports writes, the Angels just followed Boston’s lead and withdrew from the Mark Teixeira auction. And here we pause to note that the Angels and the Red Sox are two of the richest teams in the sport. Which tells us something about Scott Boras and his asking price, and which makes those hopes of last winter — that Tex would take a hometown discount to re-up with the Braves — seem positively quaint.
Required reading for all college football fans
Know how some writers — this one, for example — keep saying there will never be a true college football playoff because the bowls are too rich and too powerful? Here’s a terrific story from Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports on just how rich and how powerful they truly are.
The Real Deal or a real steal?
According to Chris Mannix of SI.com, Evander Holyfield was jobbed out of a decision against the hulking Nikolai Valuev in Zurich on Saturday. I wish I could work up a case of righteous indignation over this, but I just can’t. I figure any 46-year-old former champion who has to go to Zurich to fight a 7-foot Russian is leaving himself open for just about anything.
Here I go again, writing about Kentucky basketball
There are those out there who just wait for the moment when I mention “Kentucky” and “basketball” so they can throw up their hands and shout, “See? He’s doing it again!”
For the record, I was born in Kentucky and graduated from UK and worked at the Lexington Herald-Leader covering, among other things, Kentucky basketball. Also for the record, I haven’t written a word about Big Blue hoops in more than a calendar year, for the simple reason that Billy Gillispie has turned Kentucky into a program barely worthy of comment.
That said, I’d be derelict in my Buzz duties if I didn’t point out that Jodie Meeks, a junior guard from Norcross, scored 46 points for Kentucky against Appalachian State on Saturday. It was the highest total by any Wildcat since 1970, and here, from the aforementioned Herald-Leader, is Mark Maloney’s game story. And here’s a column by John Clay.
And how, you’re asking, is the guy who was pushed aside to make room for the overmatched Gillispie doing? Tubby Smith’s Minnesota Golden Gophers are 10-0, having just beaten Louisville, which is coached by Rick Pitino, who was Smith’s predecessor at UK. Here’s Myron P. Medcalf of the Minnesota Star-Tribune on Tubby’s latest triumph. And here’s the famous Andy Katz of ESPN.com proclaiming Minnesota his team of the week.
(Found a Buzz-worthy link? E-mail me at mbra14@gmail.com. Much appreciation and an online shout-out could be yours.)
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Ex-Jacket grabs unlikely spot in NBA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The contract was signed, and then everything changed. No, this has nothing to do with Rafael Furcal. This is a happier tale.
Anthony Morrow was headed to the Ukraine to play basketball. The deal had been cut, although with which team he can’t remember. Then the Golden State Warriors, for whose summer-league team he’d played — he’d also been with the Miami Heat’s — offered guaranteed money to sign.
Cute story, huh? A guy from Georgia Tech doesn’t get drafted but finds a spot in the NBA.
Wait. It gets better.
On Nov. 15, Morrow scored 37 points against the Clippers to set a league record for most points by an undrafted rookie. He did it in his first pro start. He did it with such little fanfare that Baron Davis of the Clippers asked reporters: “Oh my gosh. Who was that guy?”
Said Morrow: “The only person who knew me was Eric Gordon. We played against each other last year.”
Morrow scored 25 points against Portland three days later, and suddenly the unassuming young man who’d been taking BART — San Francisco’s MARTA — to games was being hailed by U.S. News, an austere publication that doesn’t normally cover the Golden State Warriors, as a “hero” for “all workplace rookies.”
It would be nice to report that Morrow has gone on to score 30-some points in every game, but the cold truth is that he no longer starts. Still, he’s part of the Warriors’ rotation, and his average of 10.4 points ranks him eighth among rookies.
Morrow scored 15 points against the Hawks on Friday night. At noon he’d been greeted by a media conclave — two TV cameras, two print reporters — after Golden State’s shootaround. He conceded the past two months have been one giddy ride. “I’ve tried to take it all in stride,” he said, which is surely easier said than done.
He led Tech in scoring in two of his four seasons, but he was never the focal point. He was the standstill shooter — “You’re just a catch-and-shoot guy,” was how Paul Hewitt constantly prodded Morrow — who over time learned to dribble a little and make a post-up move. But he never made as much as third-team All-ACC, and even Morrow wasn’t surprised at not being drafted.
Said Don Nelson, Golden State’s coach: “[General manager] Chris Mullin picked him up. I didn’t know who he was. I later found out he played at Georgia Tech. To have that kind of skill — shooting — and go undrafted is amazing.”
Morrow: “I always believed I had a chance. It was a matter of opportunity. Every time I took the court against somebody who was drafted, I took it personally.”
And now he’s a double-figure scorer in the only league that matters, and according to his coach, Morrow is “trying to take the next step — becoming a basketball player. … When they took away his [outside] shot, he didn’t have the rest of the game. But he’s coming along nicely. … He’s the hardest worker on the team.”
Over 123 collegiate games, Morrow averaged 11.4 points, never scoring more than 31 in a game. In his first NBA season he’s averaging nearly that much, and he’s doing it for a team based in a city he’d never visited until he reported to work. It’s a feel-good yarn that just happens to be true.
“Of course I’m the same guy,” said Morrow, pretending to bristle at the suggestion that sudden success might have sapped his customary sweetness, and certainly he seems as wide-eyed and engaging as ever. Heck, he’s just thrilled to be in the U.S. The NBA is a raging bonus.
So how well did he know the Ukraine? “I visit every year,” said Anthony Morrow, lying.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Post your comment | Categories: Hawks/NBA, Tech/ACC
No Raffy? Be happy!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You know the old saying: Sometimes the best deals are the ones you thought you’d made but didn’t make because somebody weaseled out at the end.
OK, so that’s not exactly how it goes. In this case it should. The Braves didn’t get Rafael Furcal, the little man with the iffy birth certificate, and Frank Wren is miffed. He should be happy. Furcal’s weirdo waffling stopped the Braves from making a dog’s breakfast - that’s a British expression for “a real mess” - of an already peculiar offseason.
Let’s not wonder overmuch about why Furcal did what he did (or didn’t do). Let’s note instead that the Braves, who already have a pretty fair shortstop, were about to lavish $30 million on one who’s five years older. Presumably this was preparatory to another trade - Yunel Escobar in a package for Jake Peavy - but I’m not ready to give up on Escobar. And I saw enough of Furcal on his first Atlanta tour to believe he hasn’t become what he should have.
He stole 40 bases and had an on-base percentage of .384 as a rookie. Not until 2005 - perhaps not coincidentally, his contract year - did he steal so many again. Not until 2008 - perhaps not coincidentally, another contract year, this one truncated by injury - did he reach base at a higher rate.
So here’s what Furcal is: A little man of 31 (or so we believe) who has had a bad back and who has made the All-Star team once (that in 2003). For all the questions about his temper and his attitude, there’s a chance Escobar will wind up being a better player than Furcal. Heck, he already has a higher career OBP.
I know many among you are getting antsy for something - anything! - to happen, but I would again advise patience. The feeling here is that Wren’s worst move to date wasn’t backing away from Peavy or missing on A.J. Burnett or being burned by Furcal’s caprice; the one I don’t understand was giving away Tyler Flowers for Javier Vazquez.
The Braves didn’t become a fourth-place team because one thing went wrong. They’re where they are because nearly everything fell apart. They’ll only get back to where they once were by building from the ground up. They shouldn’t get in the habit of swapping young for old. They shouldn’t be pursuing anyone who isn’t a big-time starting pitcher or a run-producing outfielder.
Last I checked, Furcal is neither.
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Hawks not scared of Celtics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday’s game program featured a photo not of Joe Johnson shooting or Josh Smith swooping but, of all people doing all things, Zaza Pachulia scowling. And if you’ve been following this budding adversarial relationship, you know it made perfect sense.
The Hawks aren’t as good as the Celtics, but the Hawks aren’t scared of the Celtics. It began in the spring, when the No. 8 seed took three playoff games from the champs-to-be, and it continues apace. Twice now they’ve played in the new season, and twice Boston has escaped by the hair of Kevin Garnett’s chinny-chin-chin.
It was Garnett at whom Pachulia was glaring in the aforementioned cover photo, and their flare-up from a frenzied Game 4 resonates still. The Celtics haven’t gotten any worse — if anything, they’re even better — but the Hawks keep rising to meet them.
If not for a challenged Paul Pierce shot with 0.5 seconds remaining, the Hawks would have won in Boston last month, and if not for, of all people doing all things, Joe Johnson missing a free throw with 2.7 seconds left Wednesday, the teams might still be playing. Said the Hawks’ Josh Smith, speaking after the C’s had won by three: “We don’t have any fear of them. We treat them the same as anyone else coming in here.”
And you can tell the Celtics, who have lost only twice this season and not at all in 33 days, see the Hawks as a burgeoning threat, and you can tell the titlists haven’t quite gotten over the scare Atlanta threw them into them. Asked if he had any reaction to the shot of Pachulia challenging him, Garnett said sniffily: “I don’t talk before the game.”
Then the playing began, and here they went again, the Hawks refusing to yield anything to Boston on this floor, nosing ahead in the second quarter and building a six-point lead inside the final seven minutes. But here the selectively reticent Garnett began making a statement. He scored on a hook. He hit from 17 feet. He fed Rajon Rondo from the low post.
The Hawks led by one inside the final minute, whereupon Garnett sank another hook. Then it was down to Johnson on the line with a chance to tie, and he missed. One big-time player made all manner of big-time plays. Another big-time player unaccountably missed.
“We drew up a play and had our best guy on the line,” said Mike Woodson, the Hawks’ coach. “You can’t ask for more. … When we’re in that position again, I’ll bet my money on our team.”
And maybe he should. The Celtics aren’t going away anytime soon, but the Hawks keep getting better. And they match up with the C’s in a way nobody else in the league does. Surely the reason only Rondo looks consistently comfortable against this team is because he, alone among Celtics, can match quick on quick.
The difference is that the Hawks aren’t yet skilled enough to make the elegantly simple plays Garnett makes as a matter of course. (“Anything to sell some tickets,” was Garnett’s postgame appraisal of the program cover.) The Celtics are a finely finished product; the Hawks are still finding their feet. They’re down 0-2 on the season series, but there are miles to go before either of these teams sleep.
Many around the NBA regard Cleveland and LeBron James as Boston’s biggest threat come the 2009 playoffs, but if I’m the Celtics I’m hoping the Hawks aren’t seeded No. 4, 5 or 8 in the East. That would almost surely put them on the Celtics’ side of the bracket, and the Hawks relish every chance they get at the Green. Given enough chances, they might just get it right.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Post your comment | Categories: Hawks/NBA
Falcons’ success makes a happy season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last month Thomas Dimitroff and Scott Pioli, once Dimitroff’s boss in New England, drove to Athens to watch Georgia practice. En route the rookie general manager was still lamenting the narrow home loss to Denver three days earlier, whereupon his friend and counterpart cut him off.
“You’re 6-4,” Pioli said. “When the season started, wouldn’t you have taken 6-4?”
Even process-driven people get caught up in the rhythm of a football season. It’s tough to take a macro view amid weekly doses of micro, and here’s where we all need to consider what it is we’re witnessing. This isn’t quite the finest of the Falcons’ 43 seasons, but it’s surely the happiest.
“This is just out of the blue,” said Steve Bartkowski, the quarterback of the 12-4 team of 1980.
“This has got to be one of the most amazing seasons in Falcons history,” said Jessie Tuggle, the defensive fulcrum of the 1998 Super Bowl team.
“Winning heals everything,” said Leeman Bennett, who coached the Falcons during three of their eight playoff runs and who, like Bartkowski and Tuggle, still lives in Atlanta. And then: “You don’t even think about last year.”
Well, yes and no. We cannot fully appreciate this sunny season without first recalling its wretched predecessor. Listen as Tuggle narrates:
“Everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong. There was the trouble with Michael Vick, and the coach leaves in the middle of the night — the Falcons were the laughingstock of the NFL. They were losing their fan base, and people were looking at Mr. Blank as if certain individuals had taken advantage of him. Then they hire Mike Smith, who’s a name people don’t know — not a [Bill] Parcells — and then they have quarterback issues and the question of who to draft in the first round. It took a while for fans to absorb all that because Matt Ryan wasn’t the athlete — not the quarterback, but the athlete — Michael Vick was.”
Yet here the Falcons stand, 53 weeks after Vick was sentenced to prison and Bobby Petrino fled for the Ozarks, winners of nine games with a chance to finish 11-5. Only two teams in franchise annals — the 1980 bunch and the 1998 Dirty Birds — have bettered that, and neither faced such skepticism.
Bartkowski on 1980: “We had added a component here and there, and we’d been to the playoffs [in 1978.] It wasn’t necessarily a pipe dream. We had a lot of weapons on offense.”
Tuggle on 1998: “Our expectations were pretty high. We’d ended 1997 on a good note [winning six of the final eight games]. … But it wasn’t until the 12th or 13th week that people began to realize, ‘This team is pretty good.’ “
That team landed in the Super Bowl. Might this one? “When you get into the playoffs, anything can happen,” Tuggle said. “Why couldn’t this team do it?”
This team, as led by this quarterback, of whom Bartkowski said: “He’s light years ahead of the learning curve. Nobody has ever come into this game and done what Matt Ryan has done.”
Even if this season doesn’t last into January, even if it ends in a letdown, these Falcons have already accomplished what figured to require years of work: They’ve cleaned the slate and begun anew.
Tuggle: “There’s something about winning games that pulls a team together, and this team has pulled the city back together after Michael Vick.”
Bartkowski: “It’s been tough being a Falcons fan through the years … [but] this is a better place to live when they’re doing well. Atlanta so wants to be a football town.”
And now it can act like one. It sure as heck has a football team.
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Bradley’s Buzz: Birds, Braves and … Chizik?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Falcons. Playoffs. Believe.
I know, I know. It still seems unreal that this team is 9-5. But esteemed former colleague Steve Wyche does a nice job on NFL.com describing the mindset of these remarkable Birds. No, they didn’t figure to be where they are, but in the NFL there’s never a guarantee a team will get this close again. Ergo, seize the day!
In his “Snap Judgments” on SI.com, Don Banks guesses San Diego is thinking it kept the wrong Turner — meaning Norv, who’s no Mike Smith, as opposed to Michael, who just might be another LaDainian Tomlinson. And, speaking of Smitty, Mike Freeman of CBSsports.com calls the Falcons the NFC’s scariest team and uses the coach’s sideline flareup with Antonio Bryant as a touchstone.
Meanwhile, a raspberry for the Bravos
Esteemed former colleague Gordon Edes of Yahoo! Sports declared the Braves one of the biggest losers at the baseball winter meetings , and it must be noted that he did this before A.J. Burnett spurned the local nine to [sign with some team up North, against the resources of which, notes Scott Miller of CBSsports.com, the Braves simply had no chance.
About here, we should all take a deep breath. The season doesn’t start tomorrow. It doesn’t start for 3 1/2 months, and it’s always risky to render a pronouncement on a roster still in the process of being built. Do I like what the Braves have done so far? Not really. I regard Javier Vazquez as a No. 3 starter at best. But there’s a good chance the Padres will come calling again. Here’s Jon Heyman of SI.com describing the frustration of Peavy’s agent.
If Opening Day 2009 arrives and the Braves’ biggest acquisition remains the career loser Vazquez, then they’ll have had a losing offseason. But the belief here is that they’ll eventually find something better. Maybe even Jake Peavy.
Atlanta QB leads team to championship game!
No, not Matt Ryan. (At least not yet.) Not Josh Nesbitt, either. (At least not yet.) The quarterback in question is Eric Ward, formerly of Southwest DeKalb High. Ward hoisted the Richmond Spiders into the title game of the Football Championships Subdivision — it’s what we used to call Division I-AA — by guiding his team 62 yards in 90 seconds to beat Northern Iowa on Saturday. (The title tilt against Montana will be played Friday in Chattanooga.)
Here’s John O’Connor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Ward’s performance during that epic drive, and here’s a sidebar on the winning touchdown pass, which came with 14 seconds to play and capped a 28-for-35 performance. And O’Connor quotes Spiders coach Mike London as saying: “You can yell at Eric and he won’t get disheveled.”
Me, I get disheveled if the wind blows. (My hair especially.) But we should file the quotable Mr. London’s name away for future reference. Jim Tressel won championships in 1-AA and went on to greater fame. So, too, did Paul Johnson. And so, at least for a year or so, did Jim Donnan.
(Thanks to reader Bill Norton, a former Atlantan and a Richmond grad, for bringing this to Buzz’s attention.)
Dogpile on the Dawgs!
Wasn’t only yesterday that we media types couldn’t say enough nice things about Georgia? How times change. Pat Forte of ESPN.com recalled a former Georgian as “a hero” this week — the late Jan Kemp.
And, just for the heck of it, here’s a column from the Dalton Daily Citizen in which Adam Krohn tweaks Mark Richt for endorsing carpets, for wearing sunglasses and, most of all, for losing to Georgia Tech.
Gene Chizik? What the heck?
I was off last week and therefore didn’t have a chance to write anything about Auburn’s new coach, but I couldn’t have expressed my feelings any better than esteemed former colleague Mark Schlabach did on ESPN.com. How exactly is hiring a coach who has lost 10 games in a row an upgrade? Is this guy supposed to outflank Nick Saban? What in the wide world of sports is going on?
Ah, well. To paraphrase the last line of one of the greatest movies ever: “Forget it, Jake. It’s TigerTown.” (And no, the Jake in question didn’t pitch for the Padres.)
Speaking of movies … here, via YouTube, is a Western-inspired salute to the new Auburn coach. Click the link. You’ll enjoy it. Guaranteed, or your money back.
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Florida’s greatness prepares for another title
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They’ve won another championship, and they’ll surely win yet another on Jan. 8. That won’t arrive as particularly great news across the breadth of our envious state, but the Florida Gators are only reaping what they deserve. Their basketball team of 2006 and 2007 was an aggregation for the ages, and this football team likewise has a majesty about it.
We saw as much Saturday. No other team in the country would have beaten Alabama — indeed, until Saturday, no other team had — but Florida did it in a way that left no doubt. Down by three points in the fourth quarter, the Gators willed themselves to this latest title, and for a bunch so adept at frontrunning this closing burst served as a final argument.
Not since September had Florida trailed in a game, but against Alabama the Gators fell behind in each half. “We played hard and with a lot of toughness and tenacity,” Nick Saban would say of his Tide team, but guess which side had more?
Those of us of a certain age remember Florida when it was forever losing championships, when it had all the talent but none of the grit greatness requires. Down 20-17 against the nation’s No. 1 team, the Gators drove to the go-ahead touchdown. Then they forced Alabama to go three-and-out. Then they drove to the clincher. Said Urban Meyer: “A lot was made of this game being the old versus the new, and yes, we’ve got speed, but from Day 1 our program has been based on toughness.”
Florida outgained Alabama 133-1 in total yards that fourth quarter, underscoring what Tim Tebow called “a relentlessness” about his team. It starts with Meyer, yes, but it lives most notably in Tebow.
Said Saban: “He has been taking his team on his shoulders a lot. They have a lot of confidence in him.”
Meyer: “There’s something special inside of him.”
If you’re wondering why it was Florida representing the SEC East and not, say, that team from Athens, here you saw the difference. Matthew Stafford is a fine player who hasn’t yet found a way to be inspirational. (Stafford is every bit as low-key as his famously placid coach.) Tebow is the best player in the country because he makes so many plays himself that the other Gators dare not let him down.
Florida beat the nation’s No. 1 team on the day the Gators worked without their second-best player. Think about that. Think also about this: Through three quarters, the Tide had been the stronger team. And then the fourth quarter arrived and what had been a riveting contest became no contest at all.
Meyer: “It was a dogfight. It was check-your-will … I felt like we took some body blows — [Alabama] stuck it right down our throat in the third quarter — but we came back with the play of the day, the drive of the year.”
We’d grown used to seeing Florida win with speed, but there was no flash to this fourth quarter. The longest gain on the go-ahead possession was 13 yards. It was Alabama that had more yards passing on the day, Alabama that managed the game’s longest run. But it was Florida that slugged harder when it mattered.
“We didn’t finish,” Saban said. “They did. And he [meaning guess who] made a lot of those plays.”
If you’re counting, this makes five championships won by Florida in this city since 2005 — two SEC basketball tournaments, two SEC football titles and the 2007 NCAA championship. We can say this run of excellence is getting a bit old, but that would be petty and also dead wrong. Greatness in any form is a treat to watch. It’s time again to grit our teeth and admit that greatness resides in Gainesville, Fla.
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UGA fans become disgruntled bystanders
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Tech is still whooping it up. Nick Satan and the Urban Crier are bringing their teams to town to play for the SEC title. Has there ever been a worse moment to be a Bulldog?
Via e-mail, I asked Georgia fans of my acquaintance how they’re feeling and, being particularly nasty, for whom they’ll be rooting Saturday. Here’s what they wrote.
Eric Zeier, former Georgia quarterback and color commentator on radio broadcasts: “We have won a couple of SEC championships recently and finished No. 2 in the country last year. We have one of the best coaches in the country in Mark Richt and he has brought the program to a level where we are mentioned on a national scale. With that said, there is definitely some disappointment in the way this season finished … But it is still great to be a Georgia Bulldog!”
Vince Dooley, statuesque Georgia legend: “It would have been much, much better if we had beaten Tech and were playing in the SEC Championship game.”
Damon Evans, athletics director: “Our goal every year is to play in the conference championship game, so there is a degree of disappointment. However, we have a chance for a 10-win season, so that’s what the Bulldogs need to concentrate on.”
Jeff Dantzler, Athens talk-show host: “To have two halves and one quarter just unfold in disastrous fashion and have all three of those foes in the same city in the heart of the Bulldog nation is tough, but the sun will shine on Georgia again soon.”
Neil “Hondo” Williamson, tailgate show host: “From a macro-sense, nothing much has changed. Tech won. Hearty congratulations and best wishes. For all the talk-show junkies and internet kvetchers who believe that they witnessed some cataclysmic change in the universe a la Jon Landau’s ‘discovery’ of Bruce Springsteen, they need to relax. Tech won a close one. We’d won seven straight prior. I like our program, staff, facilities, players on a national basis and thus feel quite comfortable with our standing and direction state-wide, too.”
Zeier: “As a Dawg, you’re probably putting on the crimson sweater this weekend and yelling ‘Roll, Tide!’ “
Evans: “I’m just for the team that will best represent our conference in the national championship game.”
Bill King, author of the Junkyard Blawg on AJC.com: “I’ve heard more than one Dawg fan mutter, ‘Isn’t there a way for both of them to lose?’ … It would bother me less for Alabama to win. I’m not overly fond of Saban, but I can’t stand the Urban Crier. And we have to live with Florida every year [unlike the Tide] and they were so obnoxious after their national championship that I would love not to have to see that again.”
Mary Gerakitis, Georgia grad who is married to Richard Gerakitis, the Auburn fan who is also my lawyer: “I got an e-mail from Helen Alston, my Sunday school teaching partner for the past 20 years. She won’t be at Sunday school this week. She is a huge Florida Gator, and she thinks she and her Florida-loving cousins will be celebrating. I have to say Helen is very nice, but I’ve had to hold my tongue when she shows up at Sunday school draped in orange and blue, wearing Gator jewelry. In the stories of Noah’s Ark, she goes on and on about gators being the best animals. I don’t really think it’s right to put such ideas into the heads of our 4-year-olds.
“As a Dawg, there’s just no way I can pull for Florida. Especially not when Urban Meyer calls time out to run up the score - and not when they’ve overindulged in championships during the last few years. However, in being faithful to my Auburn-loving husband, I can’t pull for Alabama, either. So I told Helen that we’re not pulling for anybody. We’ll be disgruntled bystanders.”
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It’s time to trade Kovalchuk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We all expect Ilya Kovalchuk to leave when his contract expires after the 2010 season, but there’s no need for Don Waddell to wait. The general manager should clear the air that befogs his last-place team. He should trade Kovalchuk now.
Kovalchuk has flashed past the point of diminishing returns. He has averaged 42 goals over his first six seasons; he’s on pace to score 24. He has averaged 3.7 shots per game over those six seasons; he’s averaging 2.8 shots now. He’s playing like a man who wants to be elsewhere.
Can we blame him for that? Not really. The Thrashers have been awful for most of their existence, and Kovalchuk has been a Thrasher since 2001. Esteemed colleague Mike Knobler wrote an eye-opening story two weeks ago, posing the question: Why isn’t Kovalchuk team captain? And the man himself seemed to provide the answer in a quote: “I’m not here to be the franchise’s face or anything.”
On sheer talent, Kovalchuk is among the world’s five best players. The Montreal radio crew was buzzing over his skill in Tuesday night’s game, and in Montreal they’ve seen their share of hockey players. But the Thrashers lost to the Canadiens, and the Atlanta angle from that game wasn’t that Kovalchuk looked spiffy with a stick in his hands but that he’d been demoted to a checking line by coach John Anderson.
If you’re counting, Anderson is the fourth Thrashers coach who has tried to turn Kovalchuk into something more than a solo artist, but it seems clear he’ll only achieve true greatness by joining a team with other great players. The Thrashers are not that team and won’t be anytime soon. So why hang onto an ongoing distraction?
With the trade deadline at hand, Waddell managed to extract two useful players (Erik Christensen and Colby Armstrong), a prospect (Angelo Esposito) and a No. 1 draft pick in the February trade that sent Marian Hossa to Pittsburgh. Kovalchuk would surely bring far more, and there’s no sense waiting until February 2010 to move.
The Thrashers need lots of new players. As gifted as he is, Kovalchuk is only one man, and with every loss his case for being indispensable disintegrates. The Thrashers are already in last place. They can do no worse without him.
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Gailey outcry led to Tech to find ‘perfect fit’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Taz Anderson remembers how it was four months ago. Georgia was No. 1 in the country, and his little school had a new coach with a weird scheme. “My Georgia friends would say, ‘Do you really think that offense will work?’ Then they’d say, ‘We hope you have a nice year.’ It was condescending.”
Contrast that attitude with the one expressed by Georgia grad Saxby Chambliss, who saw Anderson at a fund-raiser Sunday night and, without mentioning an impending Senate runoff and without an iota of condescension, said: “Wasn’t that some game?”
Two days after Georgia Tech took down the mighty Bulldogs, Taz Anderson is smiling still. He’s having lunch at a restaurant across Paces Ferry from his Vinings office, and he’s trying hard to be magnanimous — “I played in the game where Theron Sapp scored and they broke their drought [against Tech], so I know how it feels,” he says — but sometimes it’s a losing effort.
Just once in our lives, each of us deserves to be as right about something as Anderson, who’s 70 and who played and served as a captain under Bobby Dodd, was about the state of Tech football. It was Anderson, the forthright Atlanta entrepreneur, who publicly griped about the extension of Chan Gailey’s contract in 2005 — “I’m disappointed Georgia Tech would expect mediocrity in anything,” he said — and has long touted the merits of Paul Johnson.
In 1999, Anderson made the trek to Chattanooga to watch Johnson’s Georgia Southern Eagles beat Youngstown State (coached by Jim Tressel) 59-24 for the Division I-AA championship.
“I wanted to see his offense,” Anderson says. “It was a cold and rainy day, and they didn’t fumble once. And [GSU’s] Adrian Peterson made one of the greatest runs I’ve ever seen.”
Anderson admits he doesn’t know Johnson well — “We played golf together,” he says — but figures he knows a leader when he sees one. “We’ve got two good ones at Tech,” he says. “[Athletics director] Dan Radakovich is very good at what he does. I told him after he fired Chan, ‘That took some guts.’ “
As for Johnson … well, Taz can and will talk all day. “He’s had to take a lot of grief [for that offense]. You really have to have faith in what you’re doing.”
Back to golf. Johnson and Anderson were paired together in the Bobby Dodd Classic, and they faced 240-yard second shots on a par-5. Anderson suggested laying up. Said Johnson: “I don’t think we should do that.”
Says Anderson, laughing: “And he knocks the ball on the green. He’s a good golfer.”
For all his prescience, Anderson doesn’t feel particularly prescient. Speaking of Gailey, he says: “I’m not a very good liar. I thought it was obvious we needed some changes.” Speaking again of Johnson: “Look what he’d done at the Naval Academy. His offense allows a team to be decent if it plays smart and doesn’t make any mistakes, and that was a perfect fit for Georgia Tech.”
Anderson didn’t make the trek to Athens for the game. “I have a 92-inch TV and a little bar and a bathroom. That’s all I need.”
He watched along with Ben Smith and Joe Delany, former Tech teammates. The Jackets trailed 28-12 after two quarters — “A long half,” Anderson said — and then everything changed. “We got the ball on the 40 and we were in the end zone one play later and then we were ahead. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Having seen it once, he doesn’t really care if he does again anytime soon. Says Tazwell Anderson, happy at last: “I’m not really worried about next year. Until then, we’re still No. 1 in the state.”
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